


mouth of a shark

by oroszlan



Series: Huddled masses yearning to breathe free [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Harry, BAMF Hermione Granger, Black Hermione Granger, Gen, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Hermione Granger, he doesn't get a choice, okay he does his best, snape doesn't want anything to do with this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14002617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oroszlan/pseuds/oroszlan
Summary: No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.(they thought they had been able to stop running.)(they have always ran.)





	1. Chapter 1

In the end, they are sent back,

_of course, of course._

Their country is safe,

_of course,_

There is nothing to be afraid of,

_of course._

The pair share a look as they are left alone on the soil of their claimed homeland.

(They cannot _afford_ to wait for their country to fall apart _again_.)

They think of South Africa, briefly -

but no, they decide as they huddle together in a barn. _state-sponsored violence_ and fear is fresh in their minds.

They cannot live in fear of their lives for yet another summer. They _won't_.

(They make a break for Botswana, instead.)

* * *

they spend their summer scraping by, sleeping rough and surviving, above all.

they manage to get one letter off to Draco. they get a small note back, saying _i'll do what i can_.

it is three weeks into their stay.

they _are_ getting by.

hermione's cat - just Cat, she doesn't name things - provides for itself. harry's bird is the same.

hermione is _(more than a)_ little skinnier, and she thinks, idly, that pansy is going to be jealous.

(she cries that night, stomach empty, and thinks that _we can't go on like this._ )

harry, already slender, already quiet, is more of both of these things.

he covers up the new scars and keeps his head down, keeps bringing whatever he can home.

he's used to this, to getting by by the skin of his teeth, to going to sleep hungry.

he knows who to avoid in town, most of the time.

when he comes home sliced up, hermione purses her lips, but doesn't say anything.

they are twelve and nearly-thirteen and they are experts at _getting by._

* * *

Draco comes through for them, and Harry decides he's going to give him a fruit basket when he next sees him.

It isn't until he sees that Draco has came through for them by sending Snape to rescue them that he thinks, quite viciously, that he's going to make sure Draco _never sees another bottle of Sleekeazy's ever again._

**_Ever._ **

Snape scowls at them, and makes it very clear that he is only here because of his godson as he escorts them to the hotel they will be staying in before they return to Britain.

Harry talks back to him without thinking too much, keeping Hermione tucked in close to his side.

(He'd never admit it, but he's worried for her. For them. This cycle of heat and cool, of leave and return is breaking them, slowly but surely.)

(He isn't the most observant, but even he can see that there are choices looming that are most likely going to drive them apart.)

Snape scowls and snaps, but he can't take House points, or assign them detention, and so he leaves them alone in the room instead.

Hermione sits on the bed.

He sits on the small chair, and thinks that _they are too young for this._

He's talking before he realises it.

"I don't know if I want to go back," he admits, the words quiet - the only other sound in the room is the whirring of the fan. "Magic is great but - I don't know where it can take me. If it drops me, turns round and decides it doesn't want me, what am I going to do?"

"If you fail?" Hermione stares resolutely out the window. "You think I haven't asked myself the same question, over and over again, Haz? The Wizarding world doesn't want us. Our world doesn't want us. You think I don't know that?"

Harry sighs. "I just want to stop _running_." and he doesn't care if he sounds whiny, or petulant, or childish.

Hermione snorts. "It's all running," she answers.

There is a silence that isn't as comfortable as they are both used to.

"I'm worried," Hermione admits. "I know you can read inbetween the lines too. I'm scared we won't ever find peace, no matter where we go."

Harry thinks of the looks the upper years share and the Night at the end of term.

He thinks he knows what she means.

* * *

Snape is an asshole throughout their trip.

He informs them cheerily of their life expectancy (55 years) and the fact that their "home" country is in a plummet towards total bankrupcy and disaster, as well as their future work prospects (none.)

Harry doesn't rise to the bait - he's learnt not to the hard way.

Hermione thinks of things like _1-in-3 are married aged under eighteen_ and feels sick the whole way to London.

London is just as she remembers - grey, rainy, and bleak in a way that makes her feel deeply uncomfortable, and she spends her time studying, still not able to shake the _fear_ of being sent _back._

Being sent back **again** , and that rankles her more than anything, because they sent them back when Harry was barely out of his hospital bed.

Sent them back like nothing had happened in either of their worlds -

Dumbledore, she reminds herself. Dumbledore listened to her explain why they shouldn't be taken back, _(deported, she had begged, please we can't be, not again -)_

and he had done it anyway, despite the dangers. Despite her fears, despite her tears.

She tilts her head back to look at the sky, and weeps silently.

 

Harry is not much better in London.

He takes Ziz out to fly as often as he can, and spends a lot of time thinking as his bird wheels in the sky.

he works through his anger silently _(always silently, always careful to go unnoticed)_

Most of all, Harry thinks about death.

He is scared to die. He is scared of small spaces, and places with locks on doors he cannot control and fire.

He is scared of people most of all, because people can be awful and terrible and evil.

He thinks of Voldemort and Dumbledore and _home_ , most of all.

Voldemort was scared, most of all, and so was Dumbledore and all the people fighting on both sides. Everyone was scared, and that made them do terrible things.

He watches Ziz complete a barrel-roll with a joyful screech.

He does not want to fight. He doesn't want 'Mione to have to fight, and he knows that if someone came calling with the right passion and arguements that she would.

_(He knows that he would too.)_

His life has been about surviving. It has been about running. It has been about him-and-'mione and it has been about finding somewhere to hide until it was safe.

There aren't any safe spaces they can fit in anymore, and Harry, as he watches red-on-black feathers dance against the cloudy sky, decides.

If there are no hiding spaces, no place he will be safe, he will have to _make one._

* * *

Things go downhill after that. They have weeks before they are due at Hogwarts, and they have no escape from their ever-watchful minder.

It wears on them pretty quickly, and the children learn to be quiet in each others company. They cannot afford to show any signs of weakness, can't argue, and so they don't.

They sit quietly, perfectly well behaved, and study from their textbooks, making idle comments on the weather whenever their Potions professor is in earshot.

Hermione wears her hair in a vivid green and silver dhuku headscarf and meets Snape's gaze unflinchingly each time.

(it is a part of her heritage, a part of her life. she has never known anywhere else but Zimbabwe and it would be beyond cruel to deny her this.)

Harry wakes one night with a scream in his throat and Snape bursting down his door, entering wand-first, and Harry throws himself backwards in a panic, still caught up in the dream that was not a dream, fire vivid in his memories -

Hermione makes it through into the room and elbows their teacher aside, snapping out a, "Put your damn wand away, _sir-"_

Harry remembers how to _breathe,_ and she raises an eyebrow as she crouches beside him and begins untangling him from his sheets. _"Idiot,"_ she grumbles, and he offers a shaky smile in response, and a cheeky, "Any chance of a cup of tea?" which gets him a light swat around the head.

"Up," Hermione commands instead, and Harry stumbles to his feet, legs still shaky, and lets her sit him down on the bed. "Must be getting soft if you've forgotten how to silence your bed."

He catches sight of Snape, still in the doorway, and thinks, quite viciously, _Bugger._

He sniffs delicately at Hermione instead and chooses to ignore him.

 

Unaware to the two children, Snape is having a bit of a breakdown in the doorway.

(Internally, of course, he's got _some_ sense of _dignity._ )

Here are two snakes he never wanted, never kept an eye out for, and was quite happy to studiously avoid for the rest of their first year -

(here are two children, broken and defiant and living-)

Here are a pair of children with scars, and

(he should've known better, should've pushed past his blind ignorance -)

Here are two he thought weak and unsuited to his House, a waste of space and -

(he should've twigged the moment he found them dusty and wary half a world away - damn his hatred, damn his idiocy - )

Here is Lily's son who he has always hated simply for the fact he was James's son _too_ -

(here is the boy who is the last remnant of the woman he loves, _the boy who is a first year and already casts silencing charms when he sleeps -_ )

He wants to _know why.  
_

And at the same time, there is a voice inside him that is quite adamant that he doesn't want to know, wants to go back to the Potions lab and forget he has anything but a deep hatred for these children who think their lives are _so **hard**_.

He watches them pick up the pieces with an ease he recognises and thinks to himself,

you blind, idiot bastard, you absolute bastard,

surely _you_ should've known broken children when you saw them.

(And now he can do _nothing_ but stand in the doorway and _watch_.)

(He should've known from the start.)

 

As the days get closer to returning to Hogwarts, Hermione watches how Snape watches Harry and _she doesn't like it._

 

He leaves them on Platform 9 and three-quarters to get the train and Hermione breathes a sigh of relief.

She'd dissect it later - right now she is too busy catching up with Pansy (who takes one look at her too skinny frame and purses her lips in silent disapproval) and Daphne (who sniffs delicately at her and offers a smile when her mother turns away)

They board the train and settle into a compartment with Tracey and Millie while Harry wanders off to find Draco and give him the mildest _please don't ever send Snape to fetch us from a foreign country_ lecture he's capable of, as apparently Draco gets very uncomfortable when angry people aren't visibly angry.

Hermione allows the other girls to drag her out of her shell a bit, and by the time they reach the school, some of the weight has lifted from her shoulders.

(Millie knocks her shoulder, and tells her to keep her chin up, and she smiles gratefully.)

The feast is more than overwhelming. She can barely clear her plate, and she knows the other girls have noticed, but are thankfully too Slytherin to dream of raising the issue so publicly and directly.

(Harry eats like it's his last ever meal, and she clocks Zabini and Nott keeping an eye on him too. She'd bet money he'll be getting interrogated too as soon as they hit their dorms.)

She doesn't think to watch for their Head of House - he's always ignored them before, after all, and it's a mistake she curses herself for as they are singled out at the end of the feast.

She considers running, but then Snape has a hold of her arm and they are towed in his wake towards the Hospital Wing.

She eyes Harry, who looks horribly angry, a fierce scowl twisting his features and thinks that Snape will treat him worse than he will treat her.

(She thinks, she would rather spare Harry this pain, humiliation, shame - she could deal with Snape exposing her secrets and flaunting them every time she made a mistake in class. She doesn't think Harry could without doing something terrible in response, and she'd spare him that too.)

She plans, quickly, but there are no other Snakes nearby.

There is, however, a few Gryffindors, who look at them with pity.

The red-head - a Weasley, she's sure - makes eye contact.

It'll have to do.

She stumbles - falls, and trips Snape.

Harry takes his cue without a word, trotting neatly over to the Gryffindors, who seem pleased enough to be defying the Slytherin Head of House and allow him to melt into their little crowd, moving off at pace.

When Snape rises again, Harry is gone and he looks furious.

(Hermione feels the beast in her belly rise up, and meets his gaze straight on. She has fire in her very _bones_ and it _roars_ in her ears and it flickers to life in her palms, ready and willing and _hungry, so hungry_ \- )

 

One of these days, Harry was going to have to have _words_ with Hermione about her throwing herself under the bus for him, he decided as he found himself sandwiched between one of the Weasley brothers and another grinning kid he thinks may be Dean Thomas.

"Alright Potter?" the ginger cheerfully prompted him with a nudge. "Reckon you'll owe us, helping you get away from Snape himself."

Harry blinked warily. "I - suppose? What do you want?"

(Of all things, he hadn't expected this - openness and honesty. He had expected something more Slytherin in nature)

Dean shrugs. "Any chance you know where the kitchens are?"

Harry raises his eyebrows, "You mean you don't? C'mon!" and he drags them towards the stairs.

The two follow, gleeful laughter falling from their lips.

 

It isn't easy for them to return to their dorms and face their peers. Hermione is tight faced and brushes off Harry without a second thought, and he lets her with reluctance, and instead turns to face Draco, and Zabini and Theo who have an altogether too Slytherin look on their faces, and Harry lets his Slytherin mask slam down instinctively and readies himself for a _long_ night.

He is not wrong - there is extensive questioning, more than a few "What the actual _fuck_ , Potter?"s and a lot of deadpan stares directed at the walls accompanied by silent _Give me **strength**_ s.

There is an unsurprising amount of resentment towards Dumbledore as well, and it is well into early morning when the conversation finally exhausts itself.

"What are we going to do?" asks Theo, head pillowed on Draco's shins.

Draco, draped across Harry hums, half asleep.

Harry looks at Blaise, who's chest he's currently propped against.

Blaise sees the _Look_ in his eyes and reflexively says _no_ without even asking what he's saying _no_ to.

Harry starts with a, "So I've been thinking," and the rest of their dorm jokingly groans, and Harry rolls his eyes.

(They are silent after Harry has presented his idea to them.)

"That -" Blaise sighs, and scrubs at his mouth. "That's hinging on a lot of factors though, and I doubt we'd be able to pull it off, we're twelve -"

Theo disagrees, politely and quietly. "What else can we do, though? It's a way out, and a lot of people are going to see it that way, they'll back us."

Draco cards his fingers through his hair, quiet for once.

(They fall asleep like that, not daring to speak of the idea, of freedom, lest it slip through their fingers like so many grains of sand -)

 

Hermione does not fall asleep to the ideas of freedom and with her peers bracketing her body.

Hermione is tired, and ashamed and worried and -

Daphne lends her shea butter to work into her dry hair and Pansy files her nails idly while keeping up a constant stream of inane chatter and gossip. It's a kindness that sets her eyes pricking with tears.

(Kindness is hard to get used to, and she finds herself almost overwhelmed.)

She lies on her four-poster and cannot stop thinking about _death,_ about the night at the end of term.

The sun is beginning to creep into the dawn sky when Hermione reaches the same conclusion as Harry did, although she reached it somewhat differently.

 _Enough,_ she thinks quietly, tiredly, _(she is so tired)_ before turning to wake Pansy, the unofficial leader of the dorm. _I've had enough._

 

They keep their heads down, the new second years, for the first couple of days, not willing to test the uneasy truce they have with the upper years.

Draco and Pansy, respective King and Queen of their dorms discuss strategies and counterstratagies in fervent, low voices between classes, brows furrowed.

They are twelve apiece and think to themselves, _my people are depending on me._

They are twelve apiece and meet each others eyes and think, _i will not be who came before me_

They are twelve apiece and allow themselves to dream, just for a moment, of being _better._

 

The first debate night comes quickly, and the second years are scared out of their minds.

 

There is a killer in their halls, the Chamber of Secrets is open, and it is if the whole world is conspiring against them and their dream.

(The important things about dreams, though, is that they never really die.)

Hermione has a tight grip on the younger Weasley's forearm as their group sweeps in, and Greg and Vince sandwich between them a pale faced but determined Longbottom.

Daphne escorts a tight-lipped Susan Bones, and Millie cheerfully drags along Padma Patil, who catches sight of Pansy and visibly steels herself.

"What," asks Yurika Haneda, voice dangerously tight as she sees them, "Is the meaning of this?"

(Tracey Davis, who's got a grip on Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, tilts her chin up, meets her eyes, and _all but dares_ Yurika to dare call her anything other than her name.)

Haneda blinks, and turns to Gemma Farely, who looks on, mildly.

"Well?" the prefect asks, and Draco steps forward cooly, not a hint of nerves on his face.

"Our Debate team," He explains. "We all have a vested interest in the subject at hand, after all." He raises a sleek, blond eyebrow as if to say, _Is there a problem?_

 Gemma shrugs, turns away. "Your funeral."

 

The debate night lasts long into the morning.

(Snape looks at the various alarms and charms he laboriously rigged up over the break _before he was so rudely interrupted_ and sees that _not a single student_ of his is in bed.

_Not. A. One._

He fishes out a bottle of Bearhuggers and activates the eavesdropping protocol with a heavy sigh.)

 

In the end, none of the speeches will be immortalized, no grand stories written about that night, the fireplace roaring as the Gryffindor contingent looks the Slytherin Quidditch team in the eyes and say, "You think we don't understand having no choice but to fight? You think we don't know that if we choose any other side we'll be shooting against our own families? You think we want to see you buried because _none of us_ had a _choice_? You think that if you say no, and don't raise your wands, that'd stop someone if all you wear is the green and silver? You know what they are like, each and every one of you. Don't tell me this is about bravery, don't tell me this is about our houses. This is our lives, and _what we make of them_."

When the Slytherin doors open the next morning to the news of another petrification, Snape sees it, a shining piece of parchement pinned to the noticeboard, a few words scrawled in messy handwriting -

_The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on._

and Snape looks at it with a certain amount of dread because this is not normal. Not Slytherin. Slytherins do not shy away from duty, and yet _this_. This, a tantamount sign of Slytherin House's affiliation, a tantamount admission to rebellion above all else - 

He does not know whether he is proud or angry, disappointed or

or.

He turns his face away, thinks of other problems. There are many, after all.

(the words are etched into his mind, and when he looks at his students, his Snakes, he sees them etching themselves onto their hearts, and he wonders _why_ \- )

 

Each of them are twelve years apiece,

and think,

_this is how we are going to win the war._

 

Ron is cornered by his brothers two days later, and the whole of Gryffindor Tower hears the resulting shouting match, and this is how it spreads, by word of mouth, paper passed in clenched fists, looks traded in silence over the tables -

_we will not fight for two extremes of a whole, we will not die for them, we will not **die, we will not!**_

 

And slowly, but surely, the tide changes.

Heirs to Noble Houses, Ancient Houses began hitching themselves to Neutral faction bandwagon, following Longbottom and Weasley, Malfoy and Parkinson and Nott and Bulstrode, Abbot and Macmillan, Greengrass and Flint, each of them telling as many as they could reach -

_we will not kill our brothers and sisters, they cannot make us, we will stand tall and **we do not turn our faces** \- _

 

 

When the Ministry comes for Dumbledore, there is no mass outrage, no demands for his return.

Instead, the Ministry is inundated with letters and petitions (and graffiti, large and changing and angry on the walls) each of them asking _what will be done?_

The newly formed and determined Neutral block brings the topic up again and again in the Wizengamot until an Auror taskforce is sent to investigate.

 

They are twelve apiece and think, as a drained Lockheart is brought up from the Chamber,

 

_this is power._

_this is how we will win the war,_

_with nerve, with cunning, with loyalty and with wisdom_

_this sleeping dragon, coiled in each one of our hearts,_

_is ready to burn their world down._

 

 


	2. updates!

the next work in this series is like, officially underway!!   
if there's anything anyone would like to see, please let me know!!

(the baby sequel is also being worked on I PROMISE. i swear, super swear, fingers crossed it'll get done soon.)

**Author's Note:**

> “No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.” 
> 
> i've enjoyed writing this.  
> give me a shout if you enjoyed reading it.


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